midnight mumbles • poetry

a letter to a little bird

this is a very long and very incoherent letter to someone who might not even read it and i'm sorry to post it here. it's also a quarter to five and i have to be up at seven to go roller skating and i am gonna HATE me in the morning when i realise i wrote this instead of getting a good night's sleep.

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my dearest melody,

i thought a lot about how to respond to what you wrote. my dad came in and placed your letter on my bed this morning, and said "it's from that girl who came to stay," and left me alone to read it. i still don't think he's particularly fond of you.

you always were a writer. i see it so much in your letters. every single thing you write feels like a poem. i envy that, a little bit. even your journal entries were better than my best work. maybe i'm biased.

i really am rambling. i want to be honest, and this is the way my mind is working right now. trying to defend me from saying the things i really want to and thinking things that will hurt me.

i think that's important to say, actually. you really hurt me, little birdie. you tore me to pieces again and again for half a year. every friend who had to hold me while i cried about you told me to ignore your letter. i was instructed to burn the letter, or bin it, or, most brutally, reply with a carefully calligraphed "k".

but that's not us, is it? we always made everything a drama. turned everything into a reason to write. that's a good thing. or maybe it isn't, in the scheme of things. either way, i think you deserve to know how i feel about things, and i deserve to finally tell you.

this may well be our final conversation. maybe it won't. but this can neither end nor go forwards without me saying what i think.

nothing about our little thing was healthy, at least for me. that was probably the most important thing i learned in the last year. i loved you so heartbreakingly much, and that's where i went wrong. we happened at such a vulnerable time in my life, and i built my new self around you - around us. i only existed in the way you thought about me. i was nothing but an addition to you. hazel jade and sparrow. sparrow and hazel jade. our friendship was who i was. it was where my art came from, where my feelings came from, where everything i was originated.

so when you were gone, so suddenly and without explanation, the pillar i built myself around collapsed. i was a footnote expected to be a novel; half a person expected to be whole and i crumbled under the weight. i lashed out. i sunk. i stopped writing. i had a breakdown on a very lovely holiday and ruined everyone's fun. i was torn between my hatred of you for leaving me like this and my fucking unwavering admiration of the goddamn ground you walked on. i ranted about you at half three in twitter groupchats and i cried thinking that i wasn't good enough.

but then, i rebuilt. i became a full person. i never took your letters off my wall, but i began to look at them with a nostalgic smile instead of a panic attack. now i'm hazel jade. no sparrow at the end.

so, if you've wondered how i am, i'm good. i'm really good. i fell in love with being happy. i did a lot of self reflection. like so fucking much self reflection. i discovered the source of my anxiety, i learned the things that make me feel really truly happy. i poured myself into making art. i made friends that let me be myself, and don't make me feel guilty for being me. and i definitely have times where year 11 drop kicks me on my ass, or i have a panic attack on the side of the road, or i feel like if i get out of my bed i'll shatter into a million pieces. but they're less frequent. and i finally feel as if the good things in my life are outweighing the bad, which is a huge thing.

i guess what i want to say through all that is that i'm sorry, too. i don't blame you for anything. i don't hate you, and as much as i wanted to, i never did. i will always have a place in my heart for you, if you ever feel ready to fill it. but if you don't, i won't hold that against you. i thank you for all the changes you bought to my life. i am the person who i am because of you, and i have grown so much since i gave you that goodbye hug.

i am not the jade that you said goodbye to then. i am healthier, and happier, and i understand myself a lot better. but i am always going to be the jade who loves you.

goodbye, or maybe see you soon

hazel jade